Since the often-sloppy implementation of the Second Vatican Council’s decrees regarding sacred liturgy, the English-speaking world has been subjected to a Mass devoid of any depth of language and vocabulary. Many nations and peoples adopted vernacular Masses, but did so with proper attention to the original language of the Roman Missal, and wrote their own orders of worship using appropriate language. Indeed, when considering all the languages in which the Mass is offered, it is baffling to see that English stands out as being the most poorly-translated of all of them. There is no possible way that “et cum spiritu tuo” can be translated as “and also with you.” Whenever I say that response, all I can imagine is some slovenly wretch with a chili-dog in his hand saying “and wit’ you too, fadda.”

However, thanks be to God, the USCCB has decided that we may embrace the new translation of the Roman Missal two months earlier than originally thought. The following comes from their website:

BELLEVUE, Washington—Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Divine Worship, announced that diocesan bishops may permit the gradual introduction of the musical settings of the people’s parts of the Mass from the new Roman Missal in September. Primarily this affects the  the Gloria, the Holy, Holy, Holy and the Memorial Acclamations.

This variation to the implementation of the Roman Missal, Third Edition, set to take place all at once on November 27, was authorized by USCCB president, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, and adopted by the committee to allow parish communities to learn the various parts of the new translation “in a timely fashion and an even pace.”

The Committee on Divine Worship made the decision in response to requests from several bishops, echoed by the National Advisory Council. Some suggested that the various acclamations could be more effectively introduced throughout the fall, so that when the full Missal is implemented on the First Sunday of Advent, the congregation will have already become familiar with the prayers that are sung.
“I ask you to encourage this as a means of preparing our people and helping them embrace the new translation,” Archbishop Gregory told the bishops. The announcement took place June 16, during the U.S. bishops Spring Assembly near Seattle.

This is a very wise decision. One reason is that the Gloria, one of the “ordinaries” of the Mass (along with the Kyrie, Sanctus, Credo, and Agnus Dei) will now be experienced before Advent’s arrival and the dropping of the Gloria until Christmas. By granting permission to implement the new translation this early, the United States joins several other areas in the English-speaking world that have already begun to use it. England and Wales have also decided on the September start date, as opposed to the Advent one.

Something that will be seen in the new Roman Missal is increased attention paid to the “propers” of the Mass. “Propers” are scriptural extracts that are proper (thus the name) to the specific weekend or feast on which they ought to be recited. There are several different places where propers are to be used:

• Introit – basically an entrance song, chanted or sung as the priest and other ministers enter the sanctuary
• Gradual – this was the predecessor of the Responsorial Psalm. The option exists to chant this in lieu of the Responsorial Psalm, something wholly advisable given the fact that many psalm settings are abusive to the ear and the soul.
• Alleluia – if using the propers, as found in the Graduale Romanum, you will note that every Sunday has its own setting of the Alleluia.
• Offertorio - oddly enough, sung during the Offertory of the Mass when the gifts are prepared.
• Communio – sung during the distribution of Communion. Baffling naming system, isn’t it?

The use of propers is encouraged by the Holy Father and the documents of Vatican II. Unfortunately, most parishes opted for communally-sung hymns instead of the specified propers of the Mass, seeing as how Gregorian Chant is seldom something that one can pick up with ease. Also, the use of hymns was allowed in order to draw the faithful into a more active and conscious participation at Mass. But ask yourself the following questions: 1. At your church, does the entire congregation actually sing the hymns? 2. Do your hymns actually reflect the total message of the Mass on any particular weekend? 3. What do you take away from singing a “hymn sandwich,” with a processional, an offertory hymn, a communion hymn, and a recessional? 4. While singing these hymns (doubtless they’ve been picked by your parish’s liturgy committee), do you actually feel edified and prayerful, or does it strike you as liturgical busy-work?

The use of propers answers all of these questions, seeing as how for the vast majority of the Church’s 2,000 year history, the propers were sung at Mass instead of hymns. They have their roots, not in some Medieval or Renaissance council or synod, but in the songs sung in the Temple in Jerusalem, songs sung by Our Lord Himself. The richness of these propers is really quite stunning, and I firmly believe that if they are reintroduced into our Masses, we will find ourselves tremendously more engaged in the Sacred Mysteries. After all, no matter how well you sing “All Creatures of Our God and King,” it’s still just a hymn that may or may not have a similar theme to the readings of the day. I am not denying that hymns can mirror and magnify the prayerfulness of Mass through interpreting the readings, but they will always be the option less-preferred in the eyes of the Church. Indeed, Vatican II asked for a revival of Gregorian Chant (see here).

But, alas, the propers are probably too daunting for any parish to just pick up and start singing this Sunday. After all, they’re in Latin, and have all these dots and squiggles and zigzags that don’t seem to make much sense. If only there was a simpler option, one that would couple nicely and naturally with the new translation of the Roman Missal . . .

Oh, that’s right. There is!

The Church Music Association of America has just published a book called “Simple English Propers,” which contains the propers of the entire year in English. The Catholic Phoenix reports on this publication:

A parish music director in Phoenix has recently completed a major project in the renewal of sacred music, one that could have a revolutionary impact upon the celebration of the Ordinary form of the Mass all over the English-speaking world, as the latter prepares for the renewal of sacred language on its way this winter, courtesy of the new translation of the OF Roman Missal.

Adam Bartlett, director of music at St. Joan of Arc parish, is the composer and compiler of the Simple English Propers, an anthology of music for the Mass that is unlike anything else available in English today.  The book, a 500-page hardback, has just been published by the Church Music Association of America (CMAA); in keeping with the radical and principled open-source, creative-commons intellectual-property-libertarianism of the CMAA and its tutelary genius Jeffrey Tucker, the entire “Simple English Propers” corpus is also available for free download.

In order for readers to understand why the Simple English Propers are so important, a brief introduction to some technical aspects of music in the Catholic Mass is in order.

The experience of most  Sunday massgoers in America has for decades been one of music as something added to the Mass but not integral or essential to it—so while the words of the liturgy itself are prescribed by the Missal, and the psalms and readings for every day of the three-year cycle are dictated by the Lectionary, one generally gets the sense that when it comes to music, the Catholic Mass is a blank canvas, an empty decorative space to be filled up by the wits and talents of the parish music ministry.

With four such hymn “slots” to be filled each Sunday—from the entrance and offertory, through the communion to the recessional—American Catholics’ experience is that songs at Mass are something freely chosen by the music director.  From choir-and-organ arrangements of “Soul of My Savior” to rockin’ Matt Maher tunes to “Gather Us In” to “God Bless America” or other special numbers on holidays, what we get week in and week out can be, like radio programming, interesting, varied, eclectic, coherent, or not.  This programming model of music as a freely chosen, extraneous addition to worship is nearly universal, and, from what authorities like Thomas Day, author of Why Catholics Can’t Sing, tell us, it is deeply rooted in pre-Vatican II American Catholicism.  We might have a lot more choices now than we did in 1959, but the model is the same—picking tunes off the nickel jukebox, downloading the playlist.

If American Catholics have had any Sunday experience of Gregorian chant, outside of chanted “ordinary” texts like the Sanctus or Agnus Dei, that experience has likely been within the same model of freely chosen music inserted into the liturgy, as one option selected from among others: perhaps one special week out of twenty, the choir chants an unaccompanied Regina coeli for the “meditation” piece after communion; or, if it’s Pentecost, maybe Veni Sancte Spiritus in the same slot.  But not too much chant: back to “Faith of Our Fathers” or something else rousing for the recessional.

While the music-as-choice model is ubiquitous, and technically “allowed” according to the General Instruction for the Roman Missal, a different and much older model of Catholic sacred music is the ideal, described and advocated in all Roman magisterial documents on liturgy in the 20^th century, including Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium. The model is simple: just sing the integral proper chants of the Mass, the prescribed Latin texts and ancient Gregorian melodies contained in the official music book of the Catholic Church, the Graduale Romanum, or “Roman Gradual.”  No choices needed:  4 different Gregorian chants for every single Mass of the entire year, with words and music compiled in a normative Roman liturgical book.

Most lay Catholics, not to mention parish musicians and clergy, are not even aware of the existence of the Roman Gradual—but even if there were two dozen copies of it in every choir loft (or “musicians’ space” at the front of more progressive churches), learning to sing these ancient Latin texts and intricate, exotic melodies would be an extremely daunting task for even the most healthy of parish music programs.  There is simply no living tradition of Gregorian chant to be found anywhere near all but a handful of our parish churches.  Without it, the Roman ideal remains a dream for some and simply inconceivable for most.  Wishing it were otherwise—that there was a culture of Latin chant in our parishes just as vibrant as you’d find in a French Benedictine monastery—isn’t enough to conjure it up.  What, then, is to be done?

This is where the Simple English Propers come in.  This revolutionary anthology, the first of its kind, contains English-language translations of all the ancient Latin liturgical chants of the Roman Gradual, set to simplified melodies adapted from the originals; unlike the daunting, technically complex lines of the Gregorian chants, a week’s worth of these adapted melodies can be easily mastered by a parish choir of average competence in a week’s time, and new ones sung with confidence and clarity in the assembly Sunday after Sunday.

What is most revolutionary about the Simple English Propers anthology is that it offers a way to a different model of sacred music, one in which there are no “songs”, no extraneous, independent musical compositions stuck into the silent slots in the liturgy, no need for a music director to program the week’s playlist according to his wits or whims.  Instead of our own choices and preferences, the SEP gives us a way to sing the Roman Church’s ancient songs, texts that have been fully integrated into the Roman Mass for centuries–unlike, say, “Amazing Grace,” “Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus,” or “America the Beautiful.”

As one liturgist recently put it: truly sacred music means not singing “at” Mass, but singing the Mass itself. The Simple English Propers present a comprehensible and technically feasible way for the average American parish to move off the beaches, where previously there had existed only the sheer cliffs of the Graduale Romanum. Thanks to Adam Bartlett and the CMAA for making this possible.